The present music market is characterized by the following:
- CD ripping and file sharing contributes for 80-90% of the music
- Personal music is stored in handheld devices and PCs
- Apple dominates both the paid-for music and the hardware (iPod)
We could see a shift in the coming years to:
- Growth in subscription and ad-funded (free) music services
- Growth in on demand music from the internet (as an alternative to storage in devices/PCs)
- Improved connectivity to audio devices (growth in mobile music, if you will)
The above is captured in the following graph:
One can easily notice the following trends in the "music market"- Collecting music has a huge momentum and is likely to continue for many years
- Audio technology has become personal (PCs have become media players)
- DLNA makes interop easier between streaming music sources and audio devices
- Internet radio services are popular and is likely to drive networked audio products
- In the next 2-3 years most of the medium-high end audio devices will have networking as a standard feature (see what Sony's CEO has to say on this in CES 2009).
Ofcourse for all these things to materialize they are certain key enablers, as discussed in one of the previous posts. In the next posts I'll focus on what all these would mean to various stake holders.
Thank you very much,
RamP!
ramp.ramp@gmail.com
